For Want of a King
by LoLoGreeneVines
Summary: Neku and Joshua talk about chess, the new Conductor, and tigers. Post-game catching up between begrudging friends.


**Author's notes: Sometimes the only solution when you have severe medium-term writer's block is to break into writing for a new fandom, so, here I am. :) This was a fun little piece to write, I enjoyed Neku and Joshua's reluctant friendship in the game and I thought they would have things to discuss afterwards. Bear in mind that I haven't yet collected _all_ of the secret reports, so there could be minor contradictions in some of the later ones. This isn't the best thing I've ever written, but I just had to write _something_ to feel at least a little productive. I hope you like it. :)**

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If somebody had asked Neku what he might have expected to find on his bed upon his return from school on any given afternoon, his answer would likely have been "I dunno, my newly-washed clothes?" or "my mp3 player, because I'm not allowed to take it to school," or some expression of bewilderment.

The fact was, there was very little in the world that had any sort of right whatsoever to be sitting on his bed. His parents knew better than to disturb the organised mess that was his room, he preferred to heap his unwashed clothes over the side of his chair, and the Sakurabas didn't even have a pet, so it should, by all rights, have been vacant.

As such, the window flung wide-open and the presence of a being (for there was surely no other word for him) perched on the end of his bed had completely bamboozled Neku.

"Hello, partner."

Neku stopped in his tracks, his school rucksack hanging limply from his hand, and gaped at the inherently irritating intruder. There was perhaps a jot more life in his violet eyes than there had been the last time Neku had seen him, his artfully-unkempt hair hung slightly longer, curling around the edge of his collar, and he had switched his grey-lilac shirt for a marginally-brighter one, but his joyless smirk was unmistakeable, even if it now carried a touch of genuine amusement rather than being completely empty.

"It's been two years. I thought I was never going to see you again," stated Neku, eyeing his visitor warily.

Joshua's smirk faded, and he adopted a thoughtful expression. "I thought so, too. But then..." he sighed. "I got bored. Why don't you take a seat?" He patted the space on the bed next to him, and Neku responded by finally dropping his bag and obstinately walking away from Joshua, opting instead to sit on the heap of Jupiter of the Monkey clothing strewn across his swivel-chair. Joshua shrugged, and Neku took his phone from his pocket and set it on the desk.

"I'm sorry to hear of your boredom, considering what happened the last time."

"Relax, it's not _that_ bad." Joshua waved his hand, as though to bat the implication away. "I'm a danger to neither Shibuya nor myself, for now. I just wanted the chance to catch up with an old _friend_."

Neku glanced at his desk and caught sight of the maths textbook that had been silently mocking him for much of the last week. "Not that I'm not glad to see you're okay, and I _am_ kind of happy to see you, but now's really not a great time. I have homework, and-"

"No, you don't."

Neku raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"You don't have homework," Joshua repeated. "That maths paper? Not happening. It was an empty threat that your teacher has no intention whatsoever of actually following through on. Revision would be a total waste of your time."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I'm the Composer. There is nothing that goes on in Shibuya that I don't know about. Also," Joshua gave a sly grin, "I heard her discussing it with her side-boyfriend."

Neku blinked. "Her... never mind. You're sure I don't need to revise?"

"Positive. Although if you'd like a crash-course anyway once I am gone, I could do you a favour as your friend and send Minamimoto over to tutor you."

"There's a threat. Wait, is he even alive?"

The corner of Joshua's mouth turned up. "Shockingly, yes. I thought that anybody with that sort of resilience deserved a promotion, so he's my new Conductor. It means that I get entertainment, he gets to spend his days getting to know my weaknesses and fruitlessly scheming to usurp me, and everybody's happy. Although I suspect he's vexed somewhat by the fact that he's so close to his target and yet is still unable to touch me." He giggled.

Neku gave a low whistle. "Damn, Josh. I bet he's properly ticked off."

"Oh, he is," said Joshua, matter-of-factly. "I find that my toys are more fun if you press their buttons."

Neku opened his mouth to respond, but found that he was unable to once he had processed this last statement. It made far too much sense, and made him feel uncomfortable, as though the admittedly already-strained atmosphere in his room had taken on the consistency of week-old custard, the sort that could only be cut with something razor-sharp, like a brand-new carving knife. Or Joshua's tongue.

Evidently, Joshua picked up on Neku's hesitation, for he raised one hand to his chin in contemplation. "What's wrong?"

Neku's hands clenched into fists by his side as his irritation amped up a notch. "Is that all people are to you? Just chess pieces in some twisted game you're playing against nobody?"

Joshua frowned. "What's this about, Neku?"

"You know, I really wanted to think that you had come to respect me as a friend, rather than just a pawn in the stupid Game."

"Neku, Neku, Neku." Joshua sighed. "Do you still understand so little of what went on in that month? Rest assured that I never _once_ thought of you as a pawn." He pondered for a moment. "Perhaps a bishop. Don't worry, though, you were the queen-side bishop. The most well-placed to take the enemy king, and right alongside the queen herself for protection. "

Neku scowled. "That's not much better."

"Wrong, actually. It's worse," Joshua pointed out. "Pawns at least have a chance, however small, of being promoted to queen."

Deciding to play along for the moment, despite his annoyance, Neku frowned. "Yeah, then where do you factor into this game? The king?"

Joshua giggled. "Don't tell me you've never played a game of chess before? From the moment I stepped into the RG, _I_ was the queen. Able to move whichever way I liked as many squares as I liked, although I was forced to obey the rules when I was blocked in. A pity I had to temporarily play the queen sacrifice card, but the game would have ended prematurely had you been erased."

"Okay, so I've never played before, but wouldn't that make me the king?" asked Neku.

It was as though a switch had been flipped. The changes were subtle, but Joshua's eyes were a fraction wider than they had been previously, and he stared at the floor, refusing to make eye-contact. "Don't think too highly of yourself, Neku," he warned. "You may be the best Shibuya has to offer, but the majority of the population is so dire that that isn't exactly something to brag about. We never had a king; whichever way the game eventually ended, I always planned for the result to be the destruction of the board being flipped. I just happened to change my mind once you succeeded in checkmating Kitaniji and proving my point."

Something about this explanation didn't quite add up, but Neku couldn't muster the effort to find the contradiction. "You're such a darling."

Joshua giggled again. "I'm glad you think so. Anyway, I'd better be off, I know how difficult it is for you to withstand my vibe for any meaningful amount of time, and I think it's probably best if I don't leave Sho in charge of the UG for too long in case I return to find a tiger in my pad. It would be very entertaining, I'm sure, but I don't particularly want a bloodbath in the bus station. It would mean the inconvenience of pressure to put on another Game, and I'm not entirely sure I can be bothered with that right now." He got to his feet, pointedly smoothing out the crumpled, unmade duvet he had been sitting on.

"You may have a point," conceded Neku, trying not to think about the possibility of a tiger on the loose in the town. "I already feel about ready to throttle you, but I have no desire whatsoever to become the next Composer."

"That's just as well, because you won't be," said Joshua, playing with a lock of his own wavy hair. "You can't even organise your own bedroom. You'd have no chance with the entirety of Shibuya."

"I know exactly where all my things are, thank you very much," muttered Neku.

Joshua raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Then where's your phone?"

"Right... oh," said Neku, staring at the empty space on his desk where he had set his phone earlier as Joshua grinned.

"That's what I thought," said Joshua, taking Neku's phone from the pocket of his jeans and tossing it across the room to its owner. "You really should pay more attention to your surroundings, or you'll miss me."

This, too, raised a red flag for Neku. "Wait, have you been watching me from the UG?"

Joshua's smirk widened into a Cheshire-Cat grin, and he began to fade from view at the same time as Neku's vexation inexplicably grew. "I might have been, _friend_ ," he said, his voice seemingly growing in power as the irritation crescendoed, until Neku felt as though he might scream from the overwhelming anger. It was only after Joshua had completely disappeared that Neku's thoughts stopped racing, settling down immediately until it felt as though he was overflowing with peace, relieved that the noise in his head had abated.

"Visit whenever you like," Neku said, addressing the space where his reluctant friend had been standing just a few seconds before. "Just don't be surprised if I punch you in the face."

It could have been his imagination, but Neku could almost hear the Composer's infernal giggling in the wind whistling through his open window.


End file.
